Match Day “Live” Blog: Leicester City v. West Ham United

Hello, and welcome to the Fosse Posse’s Live Blog of the final day of the 2022/23 campaign. If previous years are any guide, today promises to one of wild shifts in both scenarios and emotions. Let’s lay out the relegation scenarios. Three teams are still at risk and only one will survive.

LEEDS UNITED will survive with a win, an Everton loss, and a Leicester City draw or loss.

LEICESTER CITY will survive with a win coupled with Everton failing to win.

EVERTON will survive in all other permutations.

That’s it. Dead simple. Just win and hope that Everton don’t. Let’s go!

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Here’s the goal that relegated the Foxes:

FULL TIME: Everton 1 - 0 Bournemouth. Leicester City are relegated.

90+8’: Bournemouth are huffing and puffing, but they’re struggling to get the ball forward.

FULL TIME: Leicester City 2- 1 West Ham United. Over to Goodison Park.

90+4’: Huge save from Jordan Pickford at Goodison. Keifer Moore knocks a long ball down for Mathias Vina, who attempts to emulate Doucoure but the keeper isn’t screened off the shot by his own players and does well to keep it out.

87’: James Maddison takes a stud to his Achilles and goes down for an extended period. He stays on, but Ricardo Pereira replaces the limping Castagne. Six minutes of time to be added on; TEN minutes added on at Goodison.

81’: Yet another rumour of a goal for the Cherries goes around the stadium. It’s another hoax. Whoever is doing that, please stop!

79’: GOAL! Pablo Fornals gets his fourth goal against the Foxes when Faes gets pulled far too high up the pitch. 2-1 to the Foxes, but we still need a goal from Bournemouth to survive.

76’: Madders has had the Everton defenders chasing shadows all afternoon. It’s been an absolute clinic in close control in traffic. His shot after beating four defenders is deflected just wide. Dean Smith sends Jamie Vardy on for Iheanacho to try to seal the deal.

71’: Nampalys Mendy comes on for Dewsbury-Hall, who looked rusty. A lot of industry, but not much in the way of production. They’re still yet to restart at Goodison. There’s going to be a lot of injury time on Merseyside.

69’: West Ham really should have got one back. Jarrod Bowen gets behind the back line but Iversen saves. The rebound is worked to substitute Danny Ings in front of goal, but he blasts over from close range. No new goals at Goodison, but keeper Jordan Pickford tries some silliness against Dominic Solanke and hurts himself in the process.

62’: GOAL! Wout Faes gets his first Leicester City goal. He rises well to glance home from Tielemans’ free kick, giving the Foxes a two-goal lead. It may not matter, but it takes some of the pressure off the players on the pitch. It’s all down to Bournemouth now.

60’: Said Benrahma hits the post for West Ham. Michail Antonio goes over theatrically from a nudge by Thomas, but he fails to fool the referee.

57’: GOAL AT GOODISON. Abdoulaye Doucouré scores for the Toffees. As it stands, Leicester City will be relegated.

56’: Iversen does well to collect a corner. The Hammers look more dangerous this half, or maybe it’s just that Leicester.

46’: Both matches restarted at the same time, as is tradition. Leicester seem to be defending a little deeper, which does not inspire confidence. Meanwhile, Travers to the rescue again in Liverpool.

HALFTIME: In case you missed it, here’s what is potentially the most important goal in the history of ever:

46’: The urgency has gone out of the match, a fact which is aptly demonstrated by the referee blowing the whistle while the Foxes are aimlessly passing the ball around outside the Hammers’ area. At Goodison, James Garner sees his brilliant shot from distance even more brilliantly saved.

39’: As is my tradition, I’m consuming an imported adult beverage when the Foxes score. I won’t do any product placement, but if you know me, you can probably guess which. Here’s hoping I’m absolutely sloshed by the end of this one. In the meantime, someone in the King Power started a rumour that Bournemouth had scored at Goodison. Very rude, as it’s still 0-0 there.

35’: GOAL! Harvey Barnes plays a 1-2 with Iheanacho and you know what’s coming the moment he gets the return ball. He bears down on Fabianski and flicks it into the far corner. As it stands, the Foxes stay up. Huge penalty appeal at Goodison, but it’s not given.

33’: Near disaster at Goodison Park. Former Fox Demari Gray plays in Amadou Onana, whose snapshot is brilliantly saved by Mark Travers. That was too close.

28’: CLOSE! Iheancho does incredibly well to keep the ball from going over the line on the right side. He found Madders, who played it back to the Nigerian. His curler beat Fabianski but just cleared the bar. Moments later, KDH skied over from the edge of the area. It’s coming...

22’: The Hammers are having no difficulty at all playing through the Foxes’ midfield. Both KDH and Soumare are playing very high, meaning that Madders and Iheanacho are having to drop deep to receive the ball. Smith will probably need to address this.

13’: The match is being played in third gear with both sides struggling to get the final touch in otherwise promising moves. The Seniorman scuffed a shot wide with his preferred left foot and then failed to take advantage of a brilliant long ball from Evans. At the other end, Iversen did well to parry a long shot that had a lot of venom but not much placement.

1’: We’ll be keeping an eye on the Everton-Bournemouth match as well. My feed has them about 90 seconds behind our game.

It looks like all the attacking going to be down the left through Barnes and Iheanacho which seems like a pretty good plan.

Kickoff - 2: Peacock has still not started the broadcast here in the US. Really not loving that, NBC. Update: Now they’re showing the end credits of whatever film they were showing. Very, very professional.

Kickoff - 10: The starting XI: Daniel Iversen, Timothy Castagne, Jonny Evans (C), Wout Faes, Luke Thomas, Boubakary Soumare, Youri Tielemans, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, and Kelechi Iheanacho. Cags and Wilf miss out due to injuries. Vardy and Daka give Smith plenty of firepower on the bench. Definitely four at the back, could be a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 given the personnel.